Is U.S. 'Lazy' On Investment?

Leadership: President Obama told CEOs in Hawaii that the U.S. had been "lazy" in attracting foreign investment. Actually, the White House has been pretty busy demonizing it.

The Obama administration has a record of making life miserable for foreign investors that put their capital on the line to create jobs in the U.S.

Politically wedded to special interests such as Big Labor, White House officials have hurled scurrilous charges against foreign companies and muscled others in ways no domestic company would tolerate.

Foreign investors also have been targets of punitive regulations disguised as "patriotism" and had contracts kicked out from under them. Now the president would have everyone think the U.S. is merely asleep at the wheel in attracting investment from abroad. In reality, it's a different story.

"It's important to remember that the United States is still the largest recipient of foreign investment in the world," Obama told a leery foreign CEO at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Hawaii.

"But we've been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades. We've kind of taken for granted — well, people will want to come here and we aren't out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new business into America," he said.

No kidding. Obama's soft charge of "laziness" deflects attention from his record of discouraging foreign investment. Some cases in point:

Exhibit 1: In 2010 Japan's Toyota was humiliated over a safety issue. It wasn't enough to let the regulators deal with accusations about Toyota's brake pedals — as Ford and GM had been over comparable problems. The Obama White House had to publicly shame Toyota.

Accusations, later proven false, that Toyota brakes were faulty became a special hell for Toyota. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who had a conflict of interest as a regulator and shareholder in Toyota's U.S. competitors due to the auto bailout, encouraged Americans to "stop driving" Toyotas.

Obama's congressional allies hauled Toyota's president, Akio Toyoda, in from Tokyo for a Star Chamber hearing, compelling him to "apologize" before proving any wrongdoing. After a 10-month congressional investigation found Toyota wasn't at fault, none took back the comments or apologized.

Exhibit 2: U.K. oil giant BP was put through a similar wringer after the Gulf oil spill of 2009. Instead of treating BP as a domestic company, Obama proudly announced he had his "boot on the neck" of the British company and, in a move of questionable legality, demanded $20 billion.

Leadership: President Obama told CEOs in Hawaii that the U.S. had been "lazy" in attracting foreign investment. Actually, the White House has been pretty busy demonizing it.

The Obama administration has a record of making life miserable for foreign investors that put their capital on the line to create jobs in the U.S.

Politically wedded to special interests such as Big Labor, White House officials have hurled scurrilous charges against foreign companies and muscled others in ways no domestic company would tolerate.

Foreign investors also have been targets of punitive regulations disguised as "patriotism" and had contracts kicked out from under them. Now the president would have everyone think the U.S. is merely asleep at the wheel in attracting investment from abroad. In reality, it's a different story.

"It's important to remember that the United States is still the largest recipient of foreign investment in the world," Obama told a leery foreign CEO at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Hawaii.

"But we've been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades. We've kind of taken for granted — well, people will want to come here and we aren't out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new business into America," he said.

No kidding. Obama's soft charge of "laziness" deflects attention from his record of discouraging foreign investment. Some cases in point:

Exhibit 1: In 2010 Japan's Toyota was humiliated over a safety issue. It wasn't enough to let the regulators deal with accusations about Toyota's brake pedals — as Ford and GM had been over comparable problems. The Obama White House had to publicly shame Toyota.

Accusations, later proven false, that Toyota brakes were faulty became a special hell for Toyota. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who had a conflict of interest as a regulator and shareholder in Toyota's U.S. competitors due to the auto bailout, encouraged Americans to "stop driving" Toyotas.

Obama's congressional allies hauled Toyota's president, Akio Toyoda, in from Tokyo for a Star Chamber hearing, compelling him to "apologize" before proving any wrongdoing. After a 10-month congressional investigation found Toyota wasn't at fault, none took back the comments or apologized.

Exhibit 2: U.K. oil giant BP was put through a similar wringer after the Gulf oil spill of 2009. Instead of treating BP as a domestic company, Obama proudly announced he had his "boot on the neck" of the British company and, in a move of questionable legality, demanded $20 billion.

The British read this as making an example of the biggest investor from the nation that contributes 20% of America's foreign investment. BP's treatment was "beyond the pale, and symbolic of an arrogant imperial-style presidency with a track record of disdain for allies, as well as the private sector," wrote the Daily Telegraph's Nile Gardiner.

Exhibit 3: In 2009, Obama signed off on the Democratic Congress' special "Buy American" provisions in the $900 billion stimulus package, shutting out foreign investors for U.S. government contracts. The language was all about "patriotism," but it signaled that the U.S. wasn't welcoming foreigners.

The same year, Obama also refused to lift the Jones Act in the wake of the Gulf oil spill. Foreign nations' offers of expertise in cleaning up a dangerous problem were dismissed due to the 1930's protectionist act that was designed to protect union jobs.

Contracts for foreigners were broken:

Exhibit 4: In 2009, the U.S. broke its NAFTA treaty obligation to let Mexico's trucks into the U.S. Congressional Democrats ended a pilot program in 2008 and banned Mexico's trucks from the U.S. Mexico retaliated with $2.4 billion in tariffs, until it was reversed.

Exhibit 5: European jet maker EADS won a $35 billion Pentagon contract for tankers in 2010, only to see it pulled and given instead to rival Boeing — whose congressional representative said it would bring 50,000 "American jobs" to unionized Washington and other states. EADS's proposal would still have created 40,000-plus U.S. jobs — but in right-to-work Alabama.

Bad decisions like this go a long way toward explaining why U.S. foreign investment has remained stagnant on Obama's watch, growing at about the same 9% default rate as during the Bush years. The fact that other places in the world are less attractive and the U.S. has a long history of credible institutions and rule of law fuels that.

Yet with Asia and Latin America booming and in a position to invest abroad, and Europe in far worse shape than the U.S., the U.S. should be seeing double-digit foreign investment gains, as it did in the 1990s.

Instead, foreign direct investment — which totaled $2.34 trillion in 2010 — continues to grow at about the same meager 6% rate of the last decade.

Obama may say this is all due to American laziness. But it's really his business-unfriendly policies that are to blame.

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